Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Say It Ain’t So

NBER paper of the day: We analyze asset-backed commercial paper conduits which played a central role in the early phase of the financial crisis of 2007-09. We document that commercial banks set up conduits to securitize assets while insuring the newly securitized assets using credit guarantees. The credit guarantees were structured to reduce bank capital […]

What Dubner and Levitt couldn’t do in four years…

Brad DeLong does in less than a weekend. He is as enchanted as Robert was*: My personal favorite is a giant parasol 18,000 miles in diameter at L1 to absorb and then reradiate a chunk of sunlight in other bands. but notes the reality as well: But I have never been able to find anyone […]

$295 Million Would Buy A Lot of T-Shirts

Ken Houghton notes that the first thing anyone learns from Pietra Rivoli’s The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade is how pernicious the U.S. subsidy of its cotton industry is.* Now the WTO has discovered the obvious: American goods will face [$294.7] […]

Quote of the Day on Executive Pay

Via Mark Thoma, Uwe Reinhardt* hits one out of the park on economist’s research abilities: Evidently, in the mind of economists, Lone Ranger C.E.O.’s can make truly astronomical contributions to a firm’s market capitalization, ceteris paribus, which justifies high bid prices for them. Why Lone Ranger C.E.O.’s who have trashed their firm’s market capitalization should […]

Global Warming Research Datapoint

I’m staring at my car, which survived the past six NJ winters without looking much the worse for wear. At least compared to today. Data research question of the Day: Any way to get data on the number of car washes done in the winter in, say, the latitude of the lower Rustbelt over the […]